


Nifty, Whee, Leia's Fifty-Three

by salanaland



Series: Skywalker Family Feels [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Birthday Presents, Fluff and Angst, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Gen, Leia Organa Needs a Hug, Mentions of Slavery, Skywalker Family Feels, Tatooine Slave Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24675262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salanaland/pseuds/salanaland
Summary: Leia gets some unexpectedly thoughtful birthday presents.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Anakin Skywalker
Series: Skywalker Family Feels [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616419
Comments: 13
Kudos: 236





	Nifty, Whee, Leia's Fifty-Three

General Leia Organa of the Resistance wakes up on what might well be her fifty-third birthday with her head full of battle plans, naval missions, and troop movements. She blinks until her eyes focus, and tries to make sense of a universe in which Anakin Skywalker is standing at the foot of her bed, glowing blue, smiling expectantly, and holding a basket of what looks and smells like some kind of sweet, spiced bread. 

"What," she mumbles, rubbing her eyes. 

"Happy birthday!" Anakin announces. "I made you breakfast."

"It's my birthday?" Leia asks, surreptitiously checking under the blankets to make sure she went to sleep with her lower half adequately covered. "Are you certain?" 

"I'm _reasonably sure_ it's your birthday today," Anakin clarifies, his smile vanishing. "It could have been late last night. To my everlasting shame, I wasn't a good enough father to even _deserve_ to be there when you were born. But I'm _sure_ it was in this particular block of time. Please don't ask why."

Leia yawns hugely, trying to get her brain functioning. "So...uh, what's in the, uh, basket?" 

Anakin smiles again and holds out the steaming basket. "I baked for you!" At Leia's look of incomprehension, he adds, "I don't know how to celebrate birthdays Alderaan-style, but then I realized that you probably didn't know how to celebrate birthdays in Tatooine style. And _that_ I could teach you."

"Okay, but uh--" Leia yawns again. "Can I visit the 'fresher first? And is caf a traditional part of a Tatooine birthday?" 

Anakin inclines his head to the teapot floating in midair beside him. "I made tea. I'll have it ready when you get back."

When Leia returns, feeling at least mostly human, she finds a steaming cup of tea on the small table beside her bed. Anakin is perched cross-legged on the foot of the bed, which he's made neatly. (She rolls her eyes at him for that.) He pats the bed beside him, and she sits. 

"This bread is traditionally made by a parent, if you're lucky enough to have one around." He waves vaguely, adding, "You know, if they're not dead or sold to a different master. If you don't have your parents, then, you know, someone who takes care of you, someone who loves you. If you've just been sold to someone new and you don't know anyone, usually the Grandmother of the slave quarters will bake it for you." Leia stares, shocked at the utterly matter-of-fact tone of this explanation, and Anakin half-shrugs, a little embarrassed. "I was lucky, I always had my mother making it for me. Until--until I went to the Jedi Temple, that is. So...uh, now, I can make it for you, because you're my daughter _and_ I love you!"

He levitates the bread out of the basket, and Leia at first thinks it's braided, but then she realizes that it's... "A _chain_?" she asks warily. 

Anakin nods. "One link for each year of your life. Plus one for the next year. There's a...a chant, or song, for the person who makes it to sing. Asking Ar-Amu, the Mother of all the slaves, to bring you freedom in the next year."

"But I--" Leia begins. 

"Even if you're freed, you still have this for your birthday, so you never forget that once you were chained," Anakin rushes to explain, with a sad little smile. "So that you don't forget those who haven't been freed. So that you don't _forget who you are_."

"Oh," Leia whispers. 

Anakin picks up the chain of bread, gesturing for Leia to mirror him, and he chants something, in a language Leia half-recognizes from things Luke's mumbled in his sleep. The chain of bread wraps itself around Anakin's wrist, and Leia's, as he switches to Basic. "Ar-Amu, please smile kindly this coming year on my beloved daughter Leia," Anakin intones, and Leia understands that he's translating for her benefit. "May she be bound by no other chain on her next birthday. And may I be here to forge it for her in love and joy. And may I be here for her all this coming year when she seeks help in breaking chains seen and unseen." He adds quietly, "Now we both pull."

Leia tugs at her end of the chain, and almost laughs with satisfaction as the chain breaks, sending moist crumbs everywhere. "I like this tradition. There's a lot of this, you know. We can break it many more times."

Anakin grins. "That's the idea. That, and eating it. Which _I_ can't do, but I'm sure you can manage it. And share with your rebel friends." He gestures to the teapot. "I'm going to teach you my mother's tea recipe, too. Your friends can have the tea, but not the recipe."

"Why not?" Leia demands, obstinately. 

Anakin rolls his eyes. "Because it's a Skywalker family tradition, and we have few enough of those."

Leia nods and sips from her teacup, enjoying the warm spice blend. "This one's better than traumatic dismemberment, at least."

"Or being orphaned at nineteen?" Anakin asks. 

" _Technically_ ," Leia points out, dipping the sweet bread into her tea, "Luke and I were _also_ orphaned at a few minutes old. And then again at twenty-three."

Anakin inclines his head. "That's a lot of parents to have had. _I_ only got to be orphaned _once_."

Leia giggles, spraying soggy crumbs. "Oh, you poor deprived baby." She drinks more of the tea. "So, just your mother, then?" 

Anakin nods. "I had no father. And, well, while Obi-Wan Kenobi raised me from the age of nine, I, uh, don't think I deserve any sympathy about his death. Since it was at my hand."

Leia raises her eyebrows skeptically. " _No_ father? Or she didn't _know_? Or didn't want to admit...?"

Anakin shrugs. "She said the desert had given me to her."

"That sounds like the kind of thing you tell small children when you don't want to explain something embarrassing or painful," Leia says gently. 

Anakin rolls his eyes. "I wasn't a sheltered child, darling daughter. My friends' fathers were dead, or sold to another master, or _were_ the master. And _I_ had no father, because the desert had given me to my mother."

Leia chews the bread thoughtfully. "Well, I'd never believe it of anyone else. But you are a very strange person, Anakin Skywalker. Have I mentioned this?" 

Anakin snorts. "Only twice a day."

"So it's on the same level of plausibility as, say, 'Darth Vader's hidden baking talents'." She gestures. "This is _really_ good."

Anakin smiles bashfully. "It's a sign of love, you see, to make it. Because it has to be baked at night, because you can't bake during the day, obviously. Too hot, and it's not like you can take a day off from being a slave. So if you stay up all night by a hot oven making two different kinds of bread, out of ingredients you have to hoard, or save up for, or risk a lot to steal..." He shrugs, self-deprecating. "It means you care a lot."

Leia looks down at the bread, because her eyes have gone super blurry all of a sudden, probably because she's 53 now (or at least, sometime between last night and today) and what can you expect when you get so old? " _Two_ kinds of bread?" she asks unsteadily, and gulps her tea. 

"Yeah, you have to make half the links out of one kind, and halfway bake them. And then link them together with the other dough, and bake it all together." Anakin gestures to the slightly thicker links. "That's why the first kind have dried bits of fruit in them, to keep them from drying out too much from two bakes." He half-shrugs apologetically. "It should be dried pallie fruits, but your rebel friends didn't have any in the kitchens, so I had to substitute."

Leia closes her eyes. "How much did you wreck the mess hall?" she asks, not entirely sure she wants to know. 

"I cleaned up after!" Anakin insists. "And I made sure nobody wanted to go see what was happening in the kitchen while I was baking."

Leia tries not to think about how her father worded that. It seems like the wiser choice. Instead, she takes a bite from one of the fruited breads--it's denser than the other, with more subtle spices heightening the sweetness and tartness of the fruit. "This is really, _really_ good," she tells him. "Stop glowing. Gloating. Both."

"I'm not _gloating_ ," Anakin insists. "I'm just really happy that you like it. I was worried that it would pale in comparison to the cake Ackbar is having made for you." He leans closer to stage-whisper, "I heard it actually _hovers_." 

Leia rolls her eyes. "I hope not. I don't like food that flies away when I try to eat it."

"What are your feelings about luminescent frosting?" he asks. 

"It's fine, except for the blue one. I'm allergic to that particular dye."

"Ooh," Anakin winces. "I'll haunt the bakery and make sure they're not using any of that stuff."

Leia laughs. "And what are you going to do if they _are_?" 

"I can be persuasive!" Anakin insists defensively. "I wasn't going to _choke_ them or anything."

Leia raises her eyebrows skeptically. "Were you going to _threaten_ to choke them?" 

Anakin resonates with injured innocence. "No. I was _maybe_ going to make them think they heard Darth Vader telling them not to use that color." He adds, "If I just hid it, or spilled it, they'd just freak out and go buy more."

Leia nods gravely. "Whereas hallucinating a dead Sith telling them how to do their job will be much more successful."

Anakin crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue. "What's _your_ brilliant idea, then?" 

Leia practically collapses from giggling so much. "Uh--you know what, I'll--" she wipes away tears of mirth, "I'll tell Threepio that, um, the Force is telling me that there's a possibility of danger to me, maybe coming from luminous blue baked goods, and suggest that he make sure that anyone who might be planning a surprise birthday party, like Resistance High Command for instance, is aware of my allergy." She stops to giggle again. 

Anakin grins. "I should install a sensor in him that's tuned to your allergies, so if he detects anything that would hurt you--he should probably have an epinephrine injection somewhere just in case. Ooh, and I bet nobody's updated his or Artoo's hidden stock of antidotes in--" he makes a face. "Fifty-three years or more."

Leia blinks. "They have hidden antidotes?" 

Anakin nods. "I know Threepio saved Padmé's life at least once when she got poisoned. Politics is dangerous, you know..." He gestures, and a small handbag slides out from under the bed. "Which is why I made you all of _these_!" He opens the bag excitedly. 

"All of what?" Leia asks, confused. She takes out a lipstick and frowns at it. 

"Concealed weapons," Anakin explains. "That's--no, wait, the _other_ lipstick is a tiny lightsaber. _This_ one's a blaster. I could only fit in enough power for three shots. There's five shots in the inhaler--" 

"I don't have asthma," Leia objects. 

Anakin rolls his eyes. "Like anyone would believe _that_. I didn't have asthma either, but a bunch of people think I did. Oh, and all these makeups, they have slicing chips underneath." He pops an eyeshadow out of a compact to show her. "Then the mirror becomes a tiny vibro-shiv. I tried to get makeup shades I've seen you wear, too, so they'd be doubly useful. And these hairpins, you unscrew the tops and they become old-fashioned lockpicks."

Leia shakes her head in amazement. "You give the strangest presents."

Anakin grins. "Because I'm very, very strange."

"Yes. But...thank you." Leia smiles genuinely. "Thank you for--for _loving_ me even when I only wanted to hate you." 

Anakin tilts his head, considering this. " _I_ should be thanking _you_ , that you no longer hate me. I certainly wouldn't blame you if you still did."

Leia shrugs. "It's not--I'm not--look, everyone around me _follows_ me. But you _love_ me. You see all the good parts and the bad parts and you still love me and think I'm great no matter what. And you're--" She bites her lip and looks away, thinking. "So many people _leave_ me. Because they die, or they run away. And I guess you were actually the _first_ person to leave me, before I was even _born_ , but..." 

"But I came _back_ , and I'm never leaving you again," Anakin finishes. 

Leia nods, blinking. "Yes. And yes, you're an annoying, weird, clingy Force ghost, but," she looks back at him with a teary smile, " _I'm_ a driven, argumentative, super-Force-sensitive political and military leader who occasionally makes really terrible decisions that ruin lots of lives, so maybe this is what I _need_ in my life, to have the ghost of my formerly evil father hanging around all the time to watch out for me, and sort of remember my birthday, and make me the most amazing presents." She holds up the bread and the handbag full of concealed weapons. "Presents that nobody else would ever realize I'd want. So, I guess, thank you for _understanding_ me."

Anakin smiles tenderly. "You're always welcome, Leia."

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by the fabulous world-building of Fialleril, of course, although I made up the bread itself. (It's something like a bunch of cinnamon raisin bagels tied together with rings made of quick cinnamon bun dough. Although not exactly, because bagels require boiling water to make, so obviously they aren't suited to Tatooine. Instead, there's a lot of twisting involved to keep them from expanding too much in the oven.) (Most people wouldn't make a 54-link chain of bread. Anakin doesn't believe in doing anything halfway.)


End file.
